UCLA In the News May 4, 2018

Given the mall’s close proximity to bus stops, the Santa Monica and San Diego freeways and Expo Line along Westwood Boulevard, planners view it as a coveted location, said Evelyn Blumenberg, a 20-year Rancho Park resident and urban planning professor at UCLA. “It’s an area that is accessible by public transit, and so there’s an assumption that it could lead to a thriving community and be easy access to markets and potential employees,” Blumenberg said. But she also added that she’s “personally disappointed” that the development doesn’t include housing. “Housing is becoming so expensive. It’s an ideal location for transit, and it should be accompanied by housing that includes affordable units as well.” (UCLA’s Zev Yaroslavsky is also quoted)

Contrary to popular belief, “we are not necessarily seeing that every country is improving on its attitudes towards LGBT populations,” [UCLA’s] Andrew Flores, the lead author of the reports and a visiting scholar at the Williams Institute, told NBC News. Flores said until recently, it has been difficult to gauge cross-national public opinion toward LGBTQ people. The various ways surveys ask about acceptance creates “inconsistency” when trying to draw comparisons, he explained. It’s for this reason that Flores and his fellow researchers developed the new “Global Acceptance Index.”

These days, according to Min Zhou, a UCLA sociology professor who specializes in Asian studies, the easiest way to land Stateside without documentation is to use the same strategy Zhuang and Little Yan employed: Get a tourist visa and never leave. Making such immigration surprisingly easy is that Chinese authorities care less than they once did about citizens leaving the mainland. Additionally, visas to the U.S. are relatively easy to obtain. “The Chinese government does not place a lot of restrictions on travel,” Zhou said. “When you’re a dissident, they are happy if you leave. Then they don’t let you back in.”

“There are many impacts of pets on the environment,” says Gregory Okin, UCLA Geography professor and author of a recent study into the environmental impact of pets. “But they can also carry disease, pollute waterways and coastal zones through runoff from areas with faeces, and have adverse effects on wildlife. They also carry toxoplasmosis, which can be very harmful, especially to people with compromised immune systems. The effect through their food is related to the extent to which they add to general impacts of agriculture on the environment, including but not limited to raising animals.”

[Commentary by UCLA’s Nina Shapiro] Some of the latest research has demonstrated that the placebo effect does not always come from a conscious belief in a drug. It can come from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated, from the feeling of getting a shot to a doctor’s white coat and smell of an exam room. Which is how some people can experience the benefits of the placebo effect without necessarily believing in the treatment itself. That’s right. Even if you know that you are receiving a placebo, also known as a sugar pill, you can still reap the benefits of the placebo effect.

“On top of that, it’s been losing students. Losing about 100,000 students to charter schools, but also about another 100,000 due to demographic changes. And when you lose students, you lose revenue,” said UCLA’s Pedro Noguera.